Special Collection during the Pandemic

By Sally Abed et al

An unusual context

“With classes moving online back in March, I started teaching the Travel Literature course and the Eighteenth-Century Literature course on Zoom. In all the classes I teach at Alexandria University in Egypt, I usually take the students on exhibition and museum tours in Alexandria to help them connect their studies to the surrounding culture. In addition, we used to have in-class workshops on different themes. The absence of such options due to the pandemic pushed me to think differently, and so inspired by Professor Albrecht Classen’s daily haikus, I decided to conduct haiku writing workshops with the students in both classes via Zoom. The activity was an extracurricular one whose aim was to break the monotony of the self-quarantine and the stressful situation of moving classes online. The students were understandably anxious about their classes, the pandemic and the exams. The workshop was a break away from all that and provided the students with a creative space of their own. During the workshops, I explained what haikus are, provided them with the necessary background, and showed them examples of haikus written by Ezra Pound, as well as other poets. Then I asked them to write their haikus accompanied with an image or a photo and I also participated in the activity. At the end of the Zoom workshops in both classes, the students read out their haikus to each other and commented on them. These are their own words, spontaneously written and unedited. Overall, it was an exiting and rewarding experience for everyone in class that they enjoyed thoroughly.” –Sally Abed

Sally Abed teaches at the English department in Alexandria University, Egypt. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature with focus on medieval travel literature from the University of Utah. She publishes and writes on travel literature and women’s studies, among other topics. 

Special Collection: Creativity in the Time of the Pandemic 2020>>

Haikus by Sally Abed

Scheherazade,
pray tell us a bedtime tale
of new life and hope.

Midas touch again
All worthless empty riches
Stillness everywhere

Perfect spider web
Ensnares the soul in silence
A flutter of wings

I spread my wings wide
And dived into a rainbow
Of thousand colors

I miss the sea much
It visits me in my dreams
Fresh spray on my face

Smiles hide behind masks
Eyes peep suspiciously now
I can’t sneeze in peace!

Haiku by Rana Tarek

A gilded snuff box
In a gentleman’s soft hands
Bourgeois decadence

Rana Tarek (Teaching Assistant for the 18th Century Literature class at Alexandria University and an MA candidate at the English department)

Haikus by students

By Rodaina Ahmed

The Nightingale dies
Leaving a red rose behind
I’m alone again

By Marawan Mohamed

A crow circles high
A soulless vessel moving
The sound of black cries

By Ziad Othman

Life is light and dark
Conflicted, Man, Eternally
At which side he lies.

By Yara Saad

The glow is so bright
From her soul even at night
Yet, life made her blind

By Mohamed Hatem

A thought so Obscene
It suffocates my gasping brain
Like college work in Quarantine

By Bassant Ahmed

A bright beam of hope
is what we pray for non-stop,
After grief broke our all

By Habeba Ibrahim

And in the kind light,
See Her wrinkled veiny hands,
A landscape of time.

A silvery lake,
The jungle’s heart beats with each
Breeze, and a lone howl.

By Mohamed Sayed

Literature connects
Art is not separated,
Museums welcome me.

By Mariem Mohamed

Talking with my dad
Always makes me feel okay
Despite a bad day

By Mohamed Ibrahim

Everyone got home-stuck
As a tiny virus spreads
Showing man’s weakness

By Mona Allam

A narrow street.
Bumps and holes filled the ground,
Yet she finds home.

By Hana Ihab & Jailan Helmy

My cat is staring
His eyes sparkle at the food
He, a cute demon

By Maryam Mostafa

Deep and mysterious
A walk in a dead forest
yet not all alone

By Heba Mohamed

Walking in the rain,
A tall man drowned in sadness
Only him feels it.

By Salma Hadhood

The dear self of mine
A trip; she deserves it
Overwhelming life.

Published on June 2, 2020. © Authors

Subhankar Dutta is a native of Mohanpur, West Bengal, and presently working as a Teaching Assistant and Research Scholar in HSS Department, IIT Bombay. Though he uses Bengali as a preferable creative medium, he also tries to express the same in English and Hindi as well. Apart from publishing his poems in college and university magazines, he also contributed to the several little magazines and journals namely, Aalokon (The Enlightening), Sebanjali, The LangLit, and others. Being a theatre enthusiast, he is also part of “Qissa Kothi”, a Mumbai based theatre group, and serves as a PG Convener of Fourthwall, the Dramatics Club of IIT Bombay. He has directed and written plays for the club as well as for IIT Bombay for ‘Justice’ (a non-profit organization). He can be reached at subhankardutta1996@gmail.com

Special Collection: Creativity in the Time of the Pandemic 2020>>

I am never at Home

I’m never at Home!
My steps roamed around from Kashmir to Kanyakumari,
But they never met each other.
The smile, the face, the fence, the gate,
The sorry in the damasked eye,
Kisses the horizon too early.
My TV remote shuddering like a bullet gun
Thrushes the window fence and
I never came back.
Yes, they do promise of a promised land.
Yes, they promise of an easy walk!
Yes, they promise of a better life,
Yes, they promise like the birthmark!
Been there for years!

I beg, I cry, I try at each opened door,
For home, for domesticity, for belongingness!
But they pass an alien eye,
With half baked smile!
I roar, I fight, I protest at every street corner,
For shelter, for shade, for suggestions!
They cut my tongue, calling it too long to speak!

Now standing on the empty street
I look up, look down, and look left and right!
I look for faces where I belong,
I look for faces where I reside,
I look for places to rest!
I look for hope and to decide!

Yes, they promised a lot!
As if promises are hardly been kept!
Now, as the street are emptied of hope,
As the faces are getting blank,
As the tongue ceases to speak,
And the path ceases to end,
I will find my home at every coming bend!
My home will be on each unknown land!
I will find my home at every coming bend!

The old clock

The old clock tinkling like the evening dusk,
Half dark, half lightened, but still going.
It has witnessed the long past,
The Plague, the drought, the reddened sky,
The sobbing nights and drenching eye!
The tick tick tick at the deep dark night,
The housewife’s many unsaid plights!
The father who ceases to be broken,
Holding the last hope of the night, the last token!
It has heard the unfed belly crying aloud,
The uncertainty of dawn looming around!
It has witnessed the second-last,
It has witnessed a long past.

Published on May  25, 2020. © Author

Crystal Hurdle teaches English and Creative Writing at Capilano University in North Vancouver, BC, Canada. In October 2007, she was Guest Poet at the International Sylvia Plath Symposium at the University of Oxford, reading from After Ted & Sylvia: Poems (2003). Her work, poetry and prose, has been published in many journals, including Canadian Literature, The Literary Review of Canada, Event, Bogg, Vallum, Ars Medica, The Dalhousie Review, and The Capilano Review, of which she was Fiction Editor in the late eighties, and on whose Board of Directors she sat for many years. Teacher’s Pets, a teen novel in verse, was published by Tightrope Books in 2014, and is part of the 2020 North Shore Authors’ Collection in the public library system. Sick Witch (poems) is forthcoming from Ronsdale Press.  Her website is crystalhurdle.ca

Special Collection: Creativity in the Time of the Pandemic 2020>>

Distance

Picnic tables and remembrance benches cordoned off
wrapped in the yellow tape of crime scenes
gradually petering out
until the last bench sports what seems
like a yellow pendant
blowing in the April breeze
of a cancelled festive parade

New signage at Maplewood Mudflats and Bird Sanctuary
Socially distance six feet
your height
or an eagle’s full wingspan from tip to tip

Too many walkers on the trails
this brilliant blue and gold April day
even without the papier Mache floats and cherry blossom confetti
they don’t heed the signs
to walk in single file when you encounter
people coming in the other direction

the cat tails are also six feet tall
maybe I should wield one like a sabre
but the ducks chitter remonstrance when I reach
and you scold

You and I continue to walk
the imaginary eagle between us
a head like a revolving owl’s
it directs its severe gaze between one of us
and then the other
its cowl as golden as today’s unseasonable sun
its feathers intricate shiny spikes, small bones

an errant heron leaps on long legs
rips the sky like a pterodactyl
a murder of crows suddenly erupts
long black lines in the sky
where planes so recently flew
they caw and caw
social distance of no import as each crow flies
home to roost

startled, our eagle on his manlegs
lurches forward
and runs and runs over and above
the phalanx of oncoming walkers
extends his six-feet wings
glides and flies
against the river
against the tide
precipitously
Icarus or is it Daedalus
into his sun

and we don’t know how to measure
the distance supposed to be between us

we reach the last remembrance bench
with the Wordsworth plaque
“my heart leaps up when I behold
a rainbow in the sky”
gleaming with slanting sunlight
the yellow tape rustles and dances
above the birds sing

below earth-tethered
you clutch the non-sanitized guard rail
admire the faraway view
I read the sign on the bench
wonder what this person died of

the distance

Six feet
under

Ghost Flowers

Shivering snowdrops
poke through the crusty dead leaves
also mystery blooms from a frenzied planting
late last summer
Little tete a tete clutches of yellow
Phalanxes of narcissi, daffodils, and now tulips

how glad I am to have a garden in Vancouver
into which to escape the statistics
the slow walk
the slower talk
of the numbered dead
flowers are not statistics

While the flower farms in La Conner stay closed
its first daffodils rearing their heads
as the first care home victims bowed theirs
the tulip festival and parade cancelled
the tulip farms closed behind tall fences
so only drones or the birds can enjoy the sight

in Bollenstreek, people flock to the flower fields
looking for fresh air, signs of rebirth
tulip gardens such attractive nuisances
one must be cruel to be kind
help people to help themselves

cloaked government gardeners with scythes
lop off tulip heads by the hundreds, the thousands
a decapitation
floral genocide
the earth moans
is silenced
and it is too quiet

If a tree falls alone in the forest
can anyone hear it?
If a tulip erupts into blind brilliance
is it not still beautiful?
If a tulip shaft remains tall and green
can one imagine the shimmer of its parted petal bells
as they bend ghostlike toward the light?

Anaphylactic Shock

The No-Name peanut butter unwillingly substituted in my first on-line grocery order under quarantine is the exact shade of baby shit in an overfull diaper or the Depends on the old folks in so-called care homes one into which I went just before all the lock downs with my friend to visit her aunt who told her to go away but my friend stayed and cajoled and mollycoddled her because she didn’t want to make a waste of her unwanted visit though she had not been asked to come unlike all of the health care workers of whom there were not nearly enough even then even working in multiple nursing homes and I felt bad for the poor defenseless old lady who couldn’t even keep away people she didn’t want to see though maybe her dementia prevented her from remembering anything too untoward like bed sores and loneliness and deprivation and loss and the wrong visitor at the wrong time and how much worse with a virus too small to be detected by those incarcerated as in prisons but what criminal acts did the seniors commit other than growing frail not wishing to die becoming old?

Easter Triduum 2020

Maundy Thursday

The six-pack of pansies reluctant
to release from its
polyamine sheath
roots refuse to let go

the plants leap out as if
from an ice pop mould
out of season
darkest chocolate
so bitter your lips will pucker
on the unconsecrated host
you think is good for only baking
unleavened deepest chocolate
threaded with white
a lacey veil of mint striations or something like

what a find at the Superstore
freshly opened Garden Centre
we wait in line for the cashier
patiently socially distanced
spaced out in all senses
blitzed on the pollens and sunshine
non-medical masks instead of sunscreen

Scott with our massive cart of bagged soils
so many we could build another earth
slowly forward moving
on each interminably allowably distanced X
the marks for a low budget horror flick
no one wants to be a part of

I make the rounds up the aisles of flowers, seeds
smelly herbs in pots
for my garden in plots
I go for the splash of colour
very berry cherry delicious
unlikely to get chocolate eggs this year
for the wilder sounding names
calendula, mimosa, coral bells
not giving a damn about these prohibitions
for sun or for shade
for richer or for poorer
for alpine or for meadow
in sickness and in health

Scott’s fingers on the cart handrail
tap out a Morse code reckoning
of freshly tilled earth
of food security
of growing your own
He abhors Kale but it’s good for you
so I grab seven packs for luck

While I would usually hold out
for perennial or at least self-seeding
wanting my gardening dollar to s-t-r-e-t-c-h
beyond these labyrinthine lines of X to X with the hopscotch squares now too far apart
for this to be a fun game

I spring for one annual after another,
Annual, why not?

not as if we have a lot of time left

Good Friday

In heavily accented English
Quebec’s premier proclaims
the Easter bunny an essential worker
but he cautions the children
wriggly rabbit happy on their carpets at home
before the screen
This year he might not bring chocolate eggs
or effigies of himself
but date-sweetened oatmeal cookies or handwritten notes
the lettering suspiciously like a parent’s

I remember a long-ago Easter
My sister got a new chalkboard and on it
a message from the Bunny
to eat her greens and to listen to her mom and dad
not then socially distanced
That was to come
The separate rooms
The separate lives

Or maybe pancakes of bunny heads
with carefully poured long ears
my sister now a mother herself will create whiskers
with thin lines of syrup
a raisin for each nose and call it done

avoiding the dog poop overwintered
peanut M and M’s on their scorched earth front yard
my nieces will forage shrieking
with their bedraggled last-year baskets

Later, today’s children will measure other Easters
against this one
though they won’t turn up their noses
at chocolate marshmallow suckers
and Cadbury Crème eggs

“Remember when the bunny
brought those great chicken-shaped pancakes?”
“Remember when the bunny
brought GORP in cardboard egg cups
painted the colour of last year’s bathroom walls?”
“Remember when the Bunny
brought Dad’s baseball from when he was a boy?”

Fingers crossed that we will be around to remember

Holy Saturday

the abnormally clean yard
so clean you could eat off it!
gaps and gapes
in need of new plants
The shorn ferns more ragged than my self-trimmed bangs

As if in answer to my silent plea
tender fronds emerge from the earth this Easter Saturday
unfurl into the beckoning light
at the same time tendrils of hair frame my face
Oh so kindly
On this dateless clubless partyless
strangely secular though sacred night
of Netflix and death decluttering
in multiple separate rooms

Easter Sunday

Skunk cabbages both phallic and reverent
on this Easter Sunday morning

They are able to congregate
in groups larger than 50
than 100
than 250
Faith groups Zoom to parishioners
and priests sit in folding chairs at drive-by confessionals
like a drive-by shooting
but who is the accused?
what is risen?

Faster than a speeding bullet
That blood tendril unfurling in the brain
I have sinned
You are healed

Their Crayola yellow flames beam
goodwill
hope
that oft-told tale of resurrection while

(unnoticed)

elsewhere

a bat cave

tomb

slides o p e n

Neighbourhood Watch

I) Will you Be?

Tattle on the neighbours who
Build without permits
Water the grass 24 hours a day
Don’t heed the rules
to self-isolate when they return from away

Shamers social pariahs
Even easier to do from 6 feet away
Love thy neighbour
tell him what he’s doing wrong
isn’t that love?

Everyone at home
Potential crucible for violence
The neighbours leaf blow and power wash
The neighbours fire up their lawnmowers
The neighbours banish the children out of doors

Love thy neighbour until you are sick of him

Neighbour to neighbour
Will you be my neighbour?

Won’t you? Please don’t

II) TGIF

It’s a charming laneway party
the noise, oh, the noise
kids underfoot and then banished
unemployed or working from home
adult children back in the nest
the noise, oh, the noise
It’s a charming laneway party

brief respite from the every single room
now an office or a home
laptops proliferating cords
electrical wires as sullen as snakes
tripping your every move
the noise, oh, the noise
tonight each in a lawn chair
6 or 7 feet apart
each raising a glass to the celebrant
to the end of another new normal ordinary week
It’s a charming laneway party

And Tift raises a glass across the class chasm to Lapt
and Bodger blows kisses to Heldone’s wife
and Madjet talks isolation crafts to someone else’s daughter
and Xirsim and Pulette with Kanda
the noise, oh, the noise

the noise, oh, the no
every single room now a toilet or a boudoir
laptops Instagramming infidelities
electrical wires as taut as nooses
putting down the wine glass
to bang pots and pans at 7 o’clock
in harmony this disharmony
it’s a charming lane way party

until it isn’t

III) Free-range and Long-range

In the preternaturally early spring
Children run free range, far afield
We socially distance in laneway parties
On rooftop condo decks
Shivering in our overcoats as we
X to X
Raise a glass
Our own glass
(So we can use the good stuff not the watered
down no-name brand we usually give the neighbours)
to Stacey’s 40th birthday
to Liam’s promotion
even to T.G.I.F. Friday
in a week devoid of colour

Won’t you be my neighbour?

Noise carries
Isolation breeds

On the other side of the lane
A socially distanced long range rifle barrel clicks into place

Steady
Ready aim fire

X marks the spot

Mask with Blades

The former fashion designer
in the lower right hand corner of the screen
smaller than a postage stamp
you’d stick on mail currently going nowhere
–worse than post 9/11
New York currently besieged
worse than Anthrax formerly in those envelopes—
explains how to make the nonmedical masks
NY state is now clamouring for
after weeks of the mantra
that nobody need wear a mask
that masks are no good
don’t really protect
give a false sense of confidence

you glassy-eyed on the loveseat beside me

Now seamstresses on the front lines
viable options viable substitutes
a double layer of interfacing inside
Another YouTube crafter says like making a quilt but
without the batting
but with what?
What is the mythical middle layer?
I am frantic with the unknowing
air thick with old breath and flattened rage

This special from Good Housekeeping
the 2020 version of
the Second World War effort to
save our scraps—gather your metals–
and mettle
Now you need a twist tie or paper clip
to make the nose grip against the face
your distinguished roman nose
or roman a la clef
this is you or me dying
and a mask can cover up only so much

And the tinier woman on my tiny screen
like the girl in the Black Magic chocolate box ever receding
like the girl in the Borax canister ever Matrushka
Household cleaner so necessary now
alkaline mineral salt
is brandishing scissors and
apologizing
usually she’d use a
different set of scissors

to cut the paper pattern
paper

Rock paper scissors
there’s losing even in the winning
third time lucky?
Yesterday you’d brandished rock
hand balled as a fist
Anthrax not a mineral? Spores, so animal? Or is it a plant?
You knew Borax gets rid of chocolate and rust stains
How you crowed over your filled pie in Trivial Pursuit
We need a new Covid Quarantine edition
and special dispensations for o n l y t w o players

to cut from the fabric
fabric

and I think of my scissors
the pretty pearl-handled ones you gave me
on our thirtieth wedding anniversary
dulled from hacking at my incorrigible hair
and rust-bloodied from having stabbed you a day ago

they’ll have to do double duty
when in Rome
the smaller woman in the woman in the woman
I eat two chocolates, mine and yours
I replay the video
to learn how to

pandemic poem

this many days in quarantine and counting
still
counting…
still…

claustrophobic cross-country family road trip
we’re all in this together
novelty long worn off
plaintive and beseeching
amidst the torn Timmy’s wrappers
and A&W root beer cans
surfeited by salt, sugar
no treats left under Mom’s front seat
Dad’s white knuckles on the sanitized steering wheel
convert to cruise control

we’re all children in the back seat
are we there yet?
are we there yet?
still

Published on May  14, 2020. © Author

Ansel Oommen, MLS (ASCP) is a Clinical Laboratory Technologist, New York Presbyterian Hospital, Columbia University Medical Center. His artworks and poem emerged out of his intense experience of the pandemic situation. He writes:

“As a medical technologist working in clinical microbiology in NYC, I have been caught in the epicenter of the American outbreak. Since mid March, I have been conducting SARS-CoV-2 PCR tests on hundreds of patient samples to aid in the diagnosis of COVID-19. As the first human being to see the results of those tests before releasing them out into the world, I was bound by an immense gravity. As an artist, I processed my losses by dissecting, excising, and reconstructing my grief into various collages. These collages were composed of bio-hazard labels, a familiar laboratory item, to convey how elements of politics, public health, mental health, and ecology overlap. The use of bio-hazard labels also alludes to my academic training in toxicology. By capitalizing on aposematic color codes, these pieces are visual warnings for viewers to stop and reflect on the various threats that plague our world.”

Special Collection: Creativity in the Time of the Pandemic 2020>>

Autoimmunity

We are not immune as we once believed

We are not immune to business as usual
When business has always been busy
Prescribing profits over prudence
With false prophecies of golden years

We are not immune to the viral strains
Of rabid voices coughing up empty words
Ever mutating sense into missense
Each echo more feral than before

We are not immune to the dissemination of lies
Aerosolized and transmitted as truth
For even with repeat exposure
We still react to what was never foreign

We are not immune to the poisons of privilege
As we amputate left to save what is right
As we amputate right to save what is left
When instead, the diagnosis was truly systemic

We are not immune to being the greatest
When we fill our graveyards to be the least

As we reach the end stage of life as we know it
While we await a vaccine for all our ills
Let us remember:
The disease was always within ourselves

The pandemic was just a symptom.

Artworks

Published on May  04, 2020. © Artist

Joydip Sengupta is a Visual Artist based out of Kolkata. He had his education from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Scotland, UK, College of Art, New Delhi, India, Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan, West Bengal, India. While working with imagery he quite often finds himself combining organic forms along with structural elements to create contrast and to project the viewpoint of human expansion through the man-made and its implications on nature. He relies on a combination of accidents and chance encounters with form and imagery to build up the narration. A certain space triggers a certain response. This depends on the interplay of drawing, painted surface and abstract shapes that intermingle to create a sense of ambiguity. He is interested in creating mystery by tweaking reality where the familiar and the unfamiliar fuse to create a distinct realm that represents the world we live in and yet transcends it.

A few of his solo exhibitions are as follows:

• 2019: “INTERFACE”, Artworld, Sarala’s Art Centre, Chennai
• 2018: “CONUNDRUM”, Ganges Art Gallery, Kolkata
• 2013: “Sensoria”, Artworld, Sarala’s Art Centre, Chennai
• 2011: “Dialectica”, Ganges Art Gallery, Kolkata, India

• 2008: “Elastic Dreams”, Pundole Art Gallery &Arushi Arts, Kitab Mahal, Mumbai, India
• 2007: “Equinox Shift”, Gallery Bose Pacia, Kolkata, India

More information can be found at https://joydip.portfoliobox.net

Special Collection: Creativity in the Time of the Pandemic 2020>>

Artworks

Published on May  04, 2020. © Artist

Angela Duggins is currently a Ph.D. student at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Il, USA where she studies rural performance and the efficacy of persuasive performance. She holds two previous degrees in performance and communication: one from Harding University and another from East Tennessee State. Her original compositions have been performed on stage at festivals across the United States. Through performative and autoethnographic poems, she explores themes of access, oppression, and exoticization as they particularly apply to Ozark culture and performance depictions of Ozark culture. Her research has been presented at the annual conferences of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, MidAmerica Theatre Conference, the Association for Scholarly Theatre Research, and the Denver University Women’s Conference. She currently serves as the junior cochair of the graduate student subcommittee for the Association of Theatre in Higher Education. She has a coauthored chapter in the forthcoming Handbook of Organizational Autoethnography.

Special Collection: Creativity in the Time of the Pandemic 2020>>

Before the World Stood Still

Before the world stood still, I did not exist.
I left my exoskeleton behind
when I ripped myself out of my home,
stumbled,
to climb the halls of green ivy.
I knew
that only when I ground my voice
down to its smoothest form,
bashed it against echoing cliffs,
would I get to speak for the shell of my memory.

I am Ozarker.
I am a child of the red clay.
I know which fish to fry.
I know which mushroom to eat.
I know which path to hike.
I know
the cold of a 5:00 a.m. gun
as dawn melts away.
I can provide when food cannot be bought.

I am wounded.
I know the feeling of a hand flat across my face.
“don’t tell anyone”
I know when to look away.
“Nobody gets to know our business”
Take a trash bag out to the dumpster and walk away.
Wait ten minutes.
It will walk away
Maybe it had something white in it.
maybe it had something green.
Maybe it was harmless.
“Maybe you need to mind your own business.”

I’m safe now
in a university town
with quaint little shops
and consent posters
and a script on my desk
that says
“my people are good
and they deserve to be heard”

But the world has stopped,
and there are people
watching the decay of the shell float by:
Winters Bone
Ozark.
They see the darkness.
They see the hand slam into my face,
the cigarette press into my leg.

I get a text
“Is that your life?”

And…
And…

“Yes”

But there is more.
There are sunsets
and red clay towers
and bonfires
and baby showers.

Before the world stood still,
I did not exist.
Now, I half exist,
And I don’t know which is worse.

Published on May  04, 2020. © Author.

Himadri Lahiri is former Professor, Department of English and Culture Studies, University of Burdwan, West Bengal. Currently, he is Professor of English at the School of Humanities, Netaji Subhas Open University, Kolkata. He has written extensively on Diaspora Studies, Postcolonial Studies and Indian English Literature. His latest publication is Diaspora Theory and Transnationalism (Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan, 2019).  Contemporary Indian English Poetry and Drama (Newcastle on Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2019), co-edited by him, has also been published recently. He writes book reviews for newspapers and academic journals. Contact: hlahiri@gmail.com

Special Collection: Creativity in the Time of the Pandemic 2020>>

The Stranded

The last bus has left the city.
It’s lockdown now.
Why then are you waiting there
with the teeming multitude
from all corners of my country?

A new phrase perhaps – perhaps you didn’t understand.
Or you might have missed the Word
that thundered overhead – loud and clear:
Clear out, clear off!
The annus horribilis on the prowl
and no victory in sight –
On earth, in the sky or on the waters!

Laxmi the maid
who noticed last December
a strange pigmentation in the sky
and dreamt of locusts in the field
is stuck up in the metropolis.

And the last bus has left the city.

Before We Go to Sleep

The locks on the door rattle in restless wind
blowing across the Himalayas.
Inside the gated space
the sane acts insane.
Someone swats at flies invisible,
one crawls on all fours on the muddy floor,
some try how not to act patriots,
one, mad as a hatter, even climbs a podium
from there to announce:
Physician, heal thyself!

Now that we are all shut up
Locked indeed in our own sanatoriums
With no hope of parole
We can hear stomping feet outside!

Who indeed are the ones who stomp outside with heavy boots?
Who beats his own trumpet and threaten retaliation?
The panacea must arrive from the land of herbs and spices!
Who are the ones to announce modifications
and clang metals and burst crackers
to drive away the evil?

Now that we’re inside,
is it growing gloomy?
With a little bit of yoga or some tidbits
we try resistance.

Some of us sleepwalk in dim daylight!

We imagine peacocks in full arrogance in open roads and isolated buildings.
In fading daylight we hear songs of dolphins from distant waters –
are they not singing to us?
Can we then dream of dancing in the sun, hand in hand?
Can we really dream of purged egos and uncontaminated minds
before we go to sleep, finally?

Published on April 18, 2020. © Author. 

Cyril Dabydeen’s work has appeared in over 60 literary mags and anthologies, including Poetry (Chicago), Prairie Schooner (US), The Critical Quarterly (UK), Canadian Literature, and the Oxford, Penguin and Heinemann Books of Caribbean Verse and Fiction. Published 20 books of prose and poetry—the latest being God’s Spider (Peepal Tree Press, UK)  He is a former Poet Laureate of Ottawa (1984-87). He has taught Creative Writing at the University of Ottawa for many years. He is of indentured Indian heritage born in Guyana, S. America. Contact: cdabydeen@ncf.ca

Special Collection: Creativity in the Time of the Pandemic 2020>>

A Life Of Crows
Whoever we may have become
watching the crows circling
the house and making
loud cawing noises.
A caterwaul, believe me, sounds
for whoever else is listening,
as my neighbour said it’s only
about those dying.
He would take his dog outside
and look out for everyone—
what the crows know best,
birds’ ways no less, or it’s about
something else as ethologists
like Konrad Lorenz couldn’t tell.
Words left unsaid—
about my neighbour, Manuel,
long gone, broken by illness—
crows looking over now.

HEART & LUNGS

The air we breathe is what the lungs
know about, what the ancient Greeks
or the Pharaohs contemplated best
more than Harvey of blood circulation.
Oh the heart and knowing what else
the rib cage tells us about, a distinct
rhythm only I will contend with,
like Odysseus, or some other
I’ve considered less about at
odd moments in distant places,
the imagination indeed, or being
Homer again with mythology.
Ithaca I will aim for, returning
home where I consider brain cells
and start humming to myself
about the liver, kidneys, spleen;
and veins, arteries, aorta, the alveoli,
bronchial tubes as I breathe harder
making sure I’m one step closer
to my own creative self, I know,
but resorting to valves; and those
who will come after with gadgets,
a doctor’s tools yet hanging around
the neck I will again dwell upon
in my own way with a mighty
heave, not unlike real drama
played out on stage, bloodlust
being tragedy from the start.

PAEAN

My vessel, your vessel,
speaking in tongues,
my face close to yours

bending forward,
thighs uncorrupted,
feet splayed out

my voice in your ears,
this moment only–
lips pasted together

laughter I hear again,
with more praise,
a tryst starting over

heaving in, time’s
foreshadowing—
the night’s reckoning

what’s yet to come,
beckoning to you–
hands linked together

more than I care to tell
about being who we are,
with everlasting love

PRISM

This is a crepuscular time,
dark shades in between,
sun being harnessed–
the formidable heat
in the display of green,
ochre, mystery once again.

Looking around, insides
turned out, vermilion hues;
a body pouring out
this moment when all else
is happening–

Eyes, hands & feet,
further blinking,
somersaulting shadows

And with our salted
brows, the body turning–
a sulphurous sun in
my midst, beating down
from the mirageous
sea of sky.

Sobia Kiran is a Ph.D. Humanities student at York University, Toronto, Canada. She loves reading, writing and expressing herself in writing poetry, stories and essays. She has published research articles in several journals.

More info about her publications: https://lcwu.academia.edu/SKiran.

Contact: sobiakiran@yahoo.com

Special Collection: Creativity in the Time of the Pandemic 2020>>

The Last Party

What a joy it was!
Having a party with friends
Celebrating the union
Spending nights out
Treats in the hotels
Camping in the parks
Touring the city
New York…
The city bustling with life
What a fun it was!
Little did he know
The slight fever
The mild cough
Would get so rough
Within a week
He couldn’t breathe
Ventilators couldn’t help
Two other friends also suffered
The painful disease…
No longer able to meet
Or
To see one another
Last moments spent alone
Yearning for the loved ones
Till ecstasy of sleep
Changed into death

Daddy! Wake Up

Bold and Brave
In the face of virus
That knows no cure
He fought for life…
Life of others
Those who suffered
Helpless, breathless
Gasping for life
He was on the frontline
Attending his patients
Day and night
Tireless, restless
He could not go home
His daughter would call
“Daddy! I miss you”
“Daddy! Come home”
Working on the frontline
He fought with the knowledge
Of immanent death…
Sooner or later
He would be a martyr
Like many of his colleagues
Who loved and served
but
Became ill and suffered
He could not go home
He suffered silently and alone
Talking with his loved ones
On the phone
Soon this changed
He could not talk on phone
He was on machines
Breathless, speechless
Video call could show a silent face
His daughter begged
His daughter pleaded
“Daddy! Wake up
Daddy! Wake up”

March Break

We planned for long
To visit France
To visit its museums
To enjoy its galleries
To relish its cuisine
To see the Eiffel Tower
We enjoyed our flight
We loved our stay
Every moment
Exhilarating and exuberating
Suddenly!
Things began to change
We had to rush back
In the immanent lockdown
Nothing was the same…
Happiness changed into fear
Vacation into isolation
Social distancing and quarantine
Until the world would get vaccine
The roads got empty
The malls got closed
Dinner parties postponed
Conferences cancelled
Jobs started from home
Education went online
Meetings became virtual
Relations became visual
Everything changed
Formal or casual
In new mode of life